How can an app save women’s lives?

Mobilising maternal health in rural Tanzania from Vodafone Foundation.

A numbers game

The number of women dying during pregnancy and childbirth in Tanzania is some of the highest in the world with 556 deaths per 100,000 births. In fact, the number of women suffering injuries during childbirth is also incredibly high. This is due to more than 70% of Tanzania’s 52 million people living in rural areas with limited access to basic health services, meaning women who need medical treatment during childbirth are often unable to access the help they need.

Mobilising Maternal Health

The Vodafone Foundation created the Mobilising Maternal Health programme in Tanzania to strengthen the country’s health system by connecting communities to health facilities and their workers. The programme trains health workers in maternal and newborn health and educates women in the communities around healthy pregnancy, safe births and newborn care.

Safety at your fingertip

A customised mobile application was developed for Community Health Workers to educate women on healthy pregnancy and safe delivery. The app includes information about nutrition, prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission, describes the benefits of healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies, and the importance of delivering in a health facility. To date, over 65,000 women have received information on maintaining a healthy pregnancy through the mobile application.

Taxi, please

The cost of transport is often a barrier to women accessing medical facilities when they need it most. To help address this issue, Vodafone launched a 24/7 toll-free maternal emergency hotline. The hotline can be called, the emergency identified and one of the 100 district taxi drivers dispatched, at no cost, to take the patient to the nearest facility for treatment. With taxi drivers paid for the journey via M-Pesa, Vodafone’s mobile money transfer system. As a result, over 4,300 women and new-borns have been transported to a hospital for free.

This story shows how Vodafone supports Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being, specifically Target 3.1: “By 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births.”

About Vodafone

Vodafone Group plc is a British multinational telecommunications company, with headquarters in London and Newbury, Berkshire. It predominantly operates services in the regions of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. Founded in 1991, Vodafone owns and operates networks in 25 countries, and has partner networks in 47 further countries.

Learn more about Vodafone.